Tom Piccirilli - Headstone City

She said, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“As if you don't know who I am.”

You could hide some things, but never those of consequence. Dane grinned and pulled her closer and held on for a second like this moment truly mattered. Which it did, but maybe not enough. She let the kimono slide off her shoulders and she dropped on top of him, both of them keeping their eyes open while they kissed.

Somehow it made him angry and they began to struggle together, riding the wave of tension, as he pulled out those little bows on her nightie and grabbed her all over, squeezing hard. She moaned, and the noise didn't sound right. He shifted so he was on top of her on the couch and realized it was himself groaning, sounding weak.

Dane tasted blood. She was biting his lips and it hurt like fuck, but he responded in kind as her nails raked over him. The best thing about sex is you could put all your hate where your love ought to be and still get away with it.

Afterward, unsated but more relaxed, they ordered Chinese food, drank a little too much, and had another go-round with much better results. He held her, stroking her thighs, as she nodded off.

If he could sleep, he might get over this caged feeling. It would probably be gone in the morning. He shut his eyes and slid his mouth against the muscular grooves of her back, but he could still taste blood under his tongue.

While she softly snored he searched the dressers and closets but found nothing out of the ordinary. He didn't know much about bugs but he checked out the places they were most likely to be hidden, the lamps and electrical outlets.

He sat down in the sex swing for a while and decided the thing was stupid enough when two people were in it, but when you were alone it was just pitiful.

Somebody knocking on the metal door from the other side of his skull.

He moved back to the sunken living room and sat on the edge of the couch, tired all of a sudden. Working against your own apathy took a lot of energy. He toyed with Glory's hair for a few minutes as she cooed in her sleep. He shifted slightly and spotted her cell phone on the far side of the coffee table, nearly hidden by the strewn screenplays.

It was open.

He picked it up and saw the tiny screen bright with his own face.

Jesus, she really didn't have much shame. A pole scene in an action flick is one thing, but Christ, giving somebody else a show of her and Dane in bed really pissed him off.

He held the phone up and stared at it. A surge of relief went through him because, finally, the show was coming together.

He whispered, “That you, Daniel Ezekiel?”

“Hellfire, son,” the cell phone said. “You got me.”

Look at this.

The boy with the sick brain leaning over in the corner and hiding his face, but holding his arm out to Dane like he wanted to be hugged.

The kid had tears on his cheeks and dried blood clotting the sutures thatching his shaved head. His hospital jammies were open. Bedsores spotted his back, covered with a thick salve that was stinking up the place.

Below him, crouched but staring wide-eyed, Dane's mother had her forehead pressed to the boy's leg, closer to him now than she'd ever been to her own son.

Well, all right, some things you have to get used to. Dark circles rimmed her eyes and her lips were thick with yellow froth. Dane almost fell over backwards but managed to stay on his feet.

She raised her chin and her mouth moved. He got a very strong sense that she did not wish him to approach. That would disturb the moment, the dynamics of this new bond they'd made in death. Him, his ma, and the ill child.

Dane wondered, thinking if he mapped his scars and those of the boy, how they'd line up. If they would connect and continue into a larger diagram, some kind of chart showing the measured slopes and ranges of their shared pain.

Stick them up close to each other, pressed cheek to cheek, temple to temple, and you could read the jagged routes of this brotherhood of head wounds.

He could feel his ma, struggling but feeble, trying to speak and growing frustrated with her lack of voice. She crept aside, head low as if she couldn't lift it. He looked at her hand where he'd rubbed his thumb over her flesh for hours, unable to stop, ill with that endless rhythm, and saw he'd left an impression there like a burn. Perhaps it was a sign of his love.

Dane let himself relax, pressing his envy as far to the side as he could. Maybe it would be enough, but it didn't seem possible anymore.

This new son of his mother continued to weep, shaking his head, still reaching out for something more. A family of deceased might not be enough for a lonely kid. Or for anyone. A tic in his cheek started up and quickly crawled across his face.

Ma, seated on the floor now with her knees drawn up, peered at him with misery and resentment. Dane wondered where the anger had come from, since she'd shown so little of it in life. Did the dead keep count of your mistakes? Did they catalog your sins? Indexed and cross-referenced, numbered in order of greatest transgressions. There, feel the heft of your faults and failures and crimes.

His mommy, what had he ever done to make her give him the eye like that?

The kid's muscles slowly loosened as he sank down to sit beside Ma. The thrum of Dane's pulse grew steadily more distant. The boy with the sick brain took a step forward. Ma opened her mouth to speak.

“Come on by, Daniel Ezekiel,” Dane said, and shut the cell phone.

Glory Bishop was working with the feds. She'd probably helped them to corner her own husband and throw the net over him.

He turned around and she was sitting there naked, holding a Beretta Jaguar.22 loosely in her hand. All these people and their teeny guns they could hide anywhere. She must've had the gun clipped under the couch or stuffed between the cushions.

“You really think you need that roscoe with me?” he asked.

It made her grin with a little warmth, but not much. “No.”

“You got something you want to tell me?”

“I'd like for you to put your.38 over on the table there.”

“I didn't bring it with me.”

For a second it looked like Glory might want to check his pile of clothes, forgetting that she'd taken them off him in the first place. “Was it really necessary to send him the whole show?”

“I didn't. You fell asleep for a while.”

“C'mon.”

“For a couple of minutes, Johnny. You've done it before, you just don't realize it. You talk in your sleep.”

And Cogan thought he might say something interesting. “So you're partnered with the feds. To do what exactly?”

“Deal with the Monticelli drugs filtering into Hollywood.”

Jesus, back to that. “To help your husband get off easy?”

“I don't give a damn about that bastard. He lied and he used me. I'm trying to keep myself out of trouble and keep hold of some assets.”

“How much trafficking money we talking about?”

“About two hundred grand a year.”

When you broke it down that was less than twenty g's a month and hardly seemed worth the effort on anybody's part. More cash was changing hands on the corner of South Third and Hughes during the week, a block and a half from the 90th Precinct.

More likely this was really about the gunrunning coming up from south of the border. One of the serious revolutionary countries where the poppy fields took up half the nation. Guns, drugs, feds, and rebellion. It was the fed part that had fouled the equation. If Cogan had been CIA, then a banana republic government takeover would've been the first thing Dane had thought of. Well, maybe.

Glory Bishop was much sharper in some ways than he'd given her credit for, and a lot more naive too. This next scene was going to be a pretty ugly one.